Occurrence of fumonisins in Spanish beers analyzed by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method

This study describes the occurrence of fumonisin in a survey of 32 Spanish beers, including some non-alcoholic beers. The analysis was conducted using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) method and, in the range assayed (0-100 ng fumonisin B1/ml spiked-beer), recovery rates were about 81%, with variation coefficients that did not exceed 4.2%. The detection limit with this method was 3 ng fumonisins/ml beer. Results for the fourteen positive samples (43.8% of total samples) showed that the lowest amount of fumonisins found in a positive sample was 4.76 ng/ml and the highest was 85.53 ng/ml.